See Sharp?

Are you musically inclined? Auntie was once third-seat
contrabassoon in the Land of the Bemused Symphonic Orchestra
and Help Desk, so she knows just enough about music to
be dangerously dissonant. I was therefore amused when
the Redmond kids slipped in, at their announcement, that
the next version of Visual Studio would contain a new
language called C# (“C Sharp”).

Putatively designed to help developers get the biggest
bang for the buck from the Microsoft .NET (nee Next Generation
Windows Services) initiative, C# is C-like in structure
and syntax and executes within a virtual machine. Sound
familiar? Here’s a clue: The announcement didn’t mention
a new version of Visual J++. If you need to hum a few
more bars, allow me to be direct: C# is Microsoft’s latest
whack at Java.

Yep. Of all the institutional neuroses resident up Redmond’s
way, the compulsion to lay serious whup-ass on Java is
one that Auntie has the least patience with. You’d think
by now Bill and Steve would have learned that letting
at least one serious competitor survive can cut down on
the legal bills.

This is not to say Auntie holds Scott McNealy and the
Sun gang in particularly high esteem. Their half-hearted,
phony-as-a-three-dollar-bill actions toward making Java
a standard have been painful to witness.

My emotional tirade aside, let’s look at the situation
with some objectivity. Java is far more universal than
any almost-clone language Microsoft has (or will) come
up with, because Microsoft will always try to add features
designed to move developers and end users to its own OS
and applications. Inclusion of these features will also
always give Microsoft’s language a competitive advantage
in all-Microsoft environments and a competitive disadvantage
in environments where other browsers and other OSs are
present.

Will you use C#? It’s likely, especially if you develop
Windows-based apps in C++ or J++. C# isn’t designed for
the casual coder. Say what you want about Visual Basic,
VBA, and VBScript, but there’s an English-like internal
consistency (well, most of the time) to the structure
and syntax of those languages that make them comparatively
easy for newbies to pick up. But C#—like C++, J++ and
Java—has its structural roots in C and is as English-like
as “sloovometzy yfling.”

Auntie’s neutral on C#. My concern is really with Microsoft
.NET itself: Will it be truly useful in the field or is
it a not-so-subtle attempt to blur the lines between operating
system and application so that, if Judge Jackson’s decision
is upheld and two companies are created, Microsoft will
try to subvert the decision by throwing whatever it wants
into the OS company?

That’s the bottom line: Are these new products situational
reactions to the antitrust case or true attempts to evolve
the Windows operating system and supporting development
tools? I don’t know the answer.

Regardless, I’m not yet sure that C# is my kind of music.
It’s especially a tough key for the contrabassoon.

About the Author

Em C. Pea, MCP, is a technology consultant, writer and now budding nanotechnologist who you can expect to turn up somewhere writing about technology once again.

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